


Lamp

by ksuzu



Category: Rookies - Morita Masanori & Related Fandoms
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-20
Updated: 2016-12-19
Packaged: 2018-09-10 00:12:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8918983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ksuzu/pseuds/ksuzu
Summary: There’s a road after Koshien that he’s promised to travel. And once Aniya has kept three promises, he asks for his dues.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I like trying different "voices", and Aniya's a challenge. Started this quite a while ago, and never posted it anywhere. Thought AO3 would be good testing ground.
> 
> Rookies is amazing, btw. High rec.

  
  
  
His easy mask of savoir-faire cannot hide the anxious twitch of his fingers as they clutch at the winning ball, joints shaking and comprehending that this is it, this is Nikugaku, they've won their second round game, holyshitholyshit, and he needs to just sign his name on its battered surface and then he can go enjoy some of the afterglow of Koshien elite with his team like any proper high school baseball hero.  
  
Fuck this, Aniya thinks. Fuck, because he's already thrown a 156 km/hr, there's no need for him to wax lyrical about it in front of the paparazzi, grin full on ridiculous and eyes drooping from exhaustion. There's fans screaming his name outside the locker room and women creaming their pants waiting to ambush him as he boards the bus home.  
  
"Yooo! Nice job out there, Aniya!"  
  
Aniya is relieved when the reporters attach to his coach like bees to honey. Kawato is a charismatic guy in the world of high school baseball, now that Oddball Yakuza Teacher sells as a positive and not a negative headline.  
  
His stinging pitching arm elbows its way toward the little alcove in the back of the stands, weaving past the press swarming around his teammates. Mikoshiba is actually crying, hiccupping driblets of salty liquid down his still-boyish face as the captain of bona-fide Koshien game winners (holyshitholyshit) tries to give reporters a verbal quote to take home.  
  
"Nice play," a familiar voice cuts into his thoughts smoothly.  
  
Her eyes are puffy and her chin has small indent marks along the jawline. Aniya thinks not for the first time that Toko's a tease, and she should just come out and say how many torrents of emotion wracked through the benches as the team executed wave after wave of offense to clutch the game in the extra innings.  
  
He puts on his best swagger, because its a comfortable, worn mask even though he knows she can see through it like rice paper.  
  
"Seeing as I'm the hottest thing in Japan right now, don't you have something you should be giving me?"  
  
“Wha—“ Toko blinks, then averts her eyes in a way that forces Aniya's hand. “One of, maybe…” she mumbles. She won’t look at him full in the eyes, like she’s some shy coquettish girly thing that’s so unlike the Toko he knows she knows he knows.  
  
“But… Kei-chan, congratulations,” she demures, though the emotion is honest.  
  
He shakes his head. “Not that. I get that from everyone."  
  
“Ah, well, I’ll... think about it," she says finally. "I just need to realize this is all real."  
  
Aniya's not sure what "this" Toko is referring to, and he’s about to call her out as a chicken and a pussy (the latter being one of his sadder attempts at humor), but a heartbeat later, she's given him another one of her soft, fluttery pecks, and Aniya is positive, dead positive, that this moment after the winning pitch and probably lasting just as long is mysteriously just as sweet.  
  
None of that registers from his brain to his mouth, though. All he gets out is:  
  
“Fuckin’ tongue, woman! Stop jipping me out on that action!"  
  
“Uh, maybe next time," she says hurriedly, spinning around in a 360 looking for any sneaking reporters or groupies, like she’s ashamed of him or something. "After our summer break, if you do well in the Invitational Camp’s tournament."  
  
Funny thing is, he knows its a carrot, and that he’s a fucking race horse.  
  
Doesn’t matter.  
  
He gives a half-hearted second attempt and strikes out, the sound of the palm of her hand so familiar to him it’s like a ref’s whistle calling foul.

 

* * *

  
All-Japan is a weird potpourri of straight-laced superstars, half-assed gangster types, and then the ones that had maybe one more emotion than a pitching machine on their good days.  
  
Aniya is a veritable reformed gangster turned superstar on a team making it just short of Koshien quarterfinals. Still, Aniya’ll never claim to be straight-laced, so he pitches his way through practices with a fury and a snarl that impresses maybe three or four of the younger runts. It keeps him from drawing too much attention, as he pitches for his evaluations at a max of a solid 146, whereas two of his costars flirt around 150, or have fancy curves that would out-loop his aunt’s stash of okama pole dance vids, that’s how twisted they were.  
  
One of the newer representatives is Enatsu, who, along with Aniya, is a first-time invite. Neither of them feel especially compelled to acknowledge the past except to smirk at each other when one of the half-assed gangsters hurriedly puffs on a cigarette when the little shit thinks the coach isn’t looking.  
  
Enatsu takes one look at Aniya’s sloping 144 fastball and guffaws, doubling over all dramatic-like and complaining to the spectators (what few camp volunteers are secret admirers of one or two of the trainees in particular) that the great Aniya is a slob in his old age and there’s nothing to see here, etc etc.  
  
Privately, Enatsu shoves him into the wall next to the vending machines and tells Aniya that he’ll kick his kneecap off if the Nikugaku star doesn’t get serious. Old fogey or not, Aniya’s better crap than 145. Because Enatsu doesn’t understand the beauty of building up to something (and surprising the hell out of your camp’s managers and other, less observant trainees), Aniya enjoys glowering back at his old rival’s scowling mug and telling him to ‘shove it’, ‘just wait’, and ‘you’ll see who’s a pussy soon enough’.  
  
Aniya explodes with a 155 out the gate. It takes two innings for him to wind up to the 158.6. When it comes, the whole team explodes, opposite side or not. The first baseman literally drops his mitt into the ground and yells for the catcher to switch positions with him, he’s so bored, and Aniya has to pretend like it’s not a big deal, because seriously, can’t everyone do this?  
  
If this qualifies as ‘doing well’, then his results show it. He’s slotted as first string for the next invitational matches against American juniors. The baseball junkies from the States have sun-tanned freckles and talk to girls too much (the pot calling the kettle black or whatever), but it’s the way they ogle Toko once she finally comes to see him play, her fingers clasping the fencing around the dugout, that pisses off Aniya enough to make him throw over 157s several times that game. And when the 159.8 comes, Enatsu actually spits his gum out to avoid biting his own tongue, he’s so conflicted. His rival’s success was unpredictable, haphazard, but brilliant in a way that explains why one didn’t have to like Aniya, but one would have the emotional capacity of a tree branch if one didn’t want to bro-fist the guy after those clutch situations.  
  
America’s team is no slouch. They’ve got a few MLB shoe-in’s, one a particularly tall, well-muscled blonde that reminds Aniya of Shinjo. He slams the fast balls with alarming regularity after the first two outs at bat, and after that, Aniya has to, bitterly, defer to his polished, All-Star, non-Nikugaku teammates. After the game’s regular innings end in a narrow draw, but with both pitchers holding the opposing teams down to under 5 runs, Aniya sloughs off to find a warm tap of water to get rid of the sweaty ache before he plays extras that their host stadium is being pressured into, walks purposely near Enatsu to saunter by all slow-like, whistling innocently, before tucking his glove into the locker and getting out another glove—the first pitcher’s glove he’d gotten in Nikogaku, the one Toko bought with her moonlighting part-time jobs. He supposes this is a bit arrogant of him, but he wants to be ready to pose for post-game photos with a good glove—and this one is the best.  
  
Extras finish. They lose, maybe because the other pitcher’s got more variety in his pitches, and somehow, Aniya’s less pissed than he thought he’d be, since he’d been subbed out in extras, and for the regular game, he’d done well with pitching numbers, and this ain’t his team. He’s actually kind of okay, holding in his pride—until he sees the empty seat.  
  
Toko has actually left the stands when he finishes interviews and goes back to find her.  
  
He supposes she’s busy—people without glowing Koshien recommendations and suffer through university and job applications the old-fashioned way, and Toko’s grades, while good, are not the kind built purely on natural studying genius. Aniya figures that their lives will always converge, that she’d naturally study toward the best sports-geared school there is, the one he’s going to, whichever that ends up being. There’s a small but ever-growing margin of error, a niggling doubt, in Aniya’s gut, but he chases it away each time, corresponding to the times he’s made thug faces at any of the more serious looking dudes with soon-to-be-divulged crushes on his childhood friend.  
  
He slinks out of his hotel room to make a call to her via the lobby’s payphone. He know her home number by heart, and her mother knows that while he’s an idiot about a lot of things, he’s harmless, really, so the fairly matronly housewife always connects the call to its final destination.  
  
“Hey,” he deadpans when the phone clicks and he hears a familiar, soft breath against the receiver.  
  
“Kei-chan, I’m so sorry I had to leave. Ayumi had a big fight with her parents and needed to stay with me.”  
  
So it wasn’t routine studying. Aniya releases the breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. He doesn’t know who this Ayumi is, but he can think of worse friends (a worse gender, his roaming brain chimes in) for her to bring over.  
  
Unfortunately, along with the relief comes the pent up frustration, finally, of losing the game. It’s something he’d never liked about himself—his penchant for pent up aggression, irrational frustration and the like. And somehow, it’s Toko who knows him best, and that comes with side effects. It’s like just hearing her voice causes him to start spouting feelings at her.  
  
“So those fucks won.”  
  
She doesn’t say anything for a moment. It makes sense, she’s already done her fair share of comforting others today. She must be tired. Aniya feels like the Kei-chan from long ago, the little kid with blisters on his palms, bemoaning his neighbor’s cute daughters rebuffs of his attempts to feed her mud pies.  
  
“Was it a good game?”  
  
“I don’t lose.”  
  
He can almost hear her shake her head over the phone.  
  
“I mean, do you wish you could have done things differently?”  
  
Aniya knows. He’s been working on it by himself, but he wishes that the training camp had done more to work on it for him. Instead, All Japan had a series of good pitchers with mean floaters and curvers and all sorts of nasty spin balls. Aniya was there for his fastball, and its unique acceleration. They’d wanted him to focus on improving that. They’d been shooting to reach, and eventually top, 160, and reach a record in Japanese high school baseball.  
  
“I shoulda pitched better. Doesn’t matter how. I just wanna get more outs.”  
  
“You’re putting the entire team on your shoulders again.”  
  
“I’m not. This is selfish. I want to get stronger for myself. I want… the game never lies. The stronger team won, but the stronger pitcher won too.”  
  
“Kei-chan…”  
  
He clicks to hang up before he can hear what she has to say next. Maybe it’s hot shame pooling in his eyes, but as Aniya slams his fist into the wall behind the booth, his hand is shaking.

 


End file.
